Our Debut Author Spotlite features debut books of all genres by authors living in Canada. Our goal is to spotlight their stories and help Canadian and Indigenous authors connect with readers from around the world.
Francesca Ekwuyasi is a writer and multidisciplinary artist from Lagos, Nigeria. Her debut novel, Butter Honey Pig Bread, won the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers, was a finalist for CBC’s Canada Reads and was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, a Lambda Literary Award, a Governor General’s Literary Award, the Amazon Canada First
Novel Award, and the ReLit Award. She lives in Halifax.
Visit the author’s website to learn more.
From the publisher: Butter Honey Pig Bread is a story of choices and their consequences, of motherhood, of the malleable line between the spirit and the mind, of finding new homes and mending old ones, of voracious appetites, of queer love, of friendship, faith, and above all, family.
Francesca Ekwuyasi’s debut novel tells the interwoven stories of twin sisters, Kehinde and Taiye, and their mother, Kambirinachi. Kambirinachi feels she was born an Ogbanje, a spirit that plagues families with misfortune by dying in childhood to cause its mother misery. She believes that she has made the unnatural choice of staying alive to love her human family and now lives in fear of the consequences of that decision.
Some of Kambirinachi’s worst fears come true when her daughter, Kehinde, experiences a devasting childhood trauma that causes the family to fracture in seemingly irreversible ways. As soon as she’s of age, Kehinde moves away and cuts contact with her twin sister and mother. Alone in Montreal, she struggles to find ways to heal while building a life of her own. Meanwhile, Taiye, plagued by guilt for what happened to her sister, flees to London and attempts to numb the loss of the relationship with her twin through reckless hedonism.
Now, after more than a decade of living apart, Taiye and Kehinde have returned home to Lagos to visit their mother. It is here that the three women must face each other and address the wounds of the past if they are to reconcile and move forward.
Raves
Kai Cheng Thom, author
“This intergenerational tale of three Nigerian women finding their way through a maze of love, memory, and trauma weaves a haunting spell over the reader from its very first word. Ekwuyasi’s sensuous prose, deft plotting, and keen insights into human nature combine to form a vision that feels like peering deep into the souls of a trio of dear friends.”
Canisia Lubrin, author
“Where expectations of genre leave their own delicious signatures across fabulism, the folkloric, the strange, and a mercurial realism, the queerness and sensuality of this debut novel excites. Butter Honey Pig Bread roves taste-first through the ingredients of things that mark the modern, if enduring, currents of familial and amorous bonds by a writer of ample talent.”
The Puritan
“Ekwuyasi’s prose conjures up a particular energy and literary finesse reminiscent of Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater.”
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